Recommended Tools For Liferay

The following instructions will help you get your development environment ready for working with the

source code. These instructions are specific to setting up for deployment to Orion server and Tomcat 5.5

developing with Java JDK 1.5. Liferay Portal is compatible with Java 1.4 also and a wide array of

application servers and containers. You will need to adjust your development environment according to

your platform.

Before we can get started, the following components must be installed on your machine.

3.1. JDK 1.5.0 or JDK 1.4.2

1. Download and install JDK 1.5.0 [http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp]. JDK 1.4 is also

supported.

2. Set an environment variable called JAVA_HOME to point to your JDK directory.

3.2. Jikes 1.22 or Jikes 1.21

Jikes is a Java compiler by IBM that is much faster than the original one provided by the JDK.

1. Download and unzip Jikes 1.22 [http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/jikes]. If using JDK

1.4 you have to use Jikes 1.21 instead.

2. Set an environment variable called JIKES_HOME to point to your Jikes directory.

3. Add JIKES_HOME\bin to your PATH environment variable.

3.3. Ant 1.6.5

1. Download and unzip the latest version of Ant [http://ant.apache.org/].

2. Set an environment variable called ANT_HOME to point to your Ant directory.

3. Add ANT_HOME\bin to your PATH environment variable.

3.4. Subversion or a Similar Version Control System

We recommend that you put all your code and configuration files into a version control system.

Subversion is free and open source and can be used through a set of commands, by installing a

subversion client such as SmartSVN [http://www.smartsvn.com/], TortoiseSVN [http://tortoisesvn.net/]

or through the integration mechanisms provided by most IDEs.

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